Going back to my roots

I’ve ended up going down a family tree rabbit hole. I was looking through old cine film and found my granny and her sisters on it, so I got to thinking more about them and wondering about their parents. I also found some old photos of both sets of my grandparents. It’s a real minefield out there, with a lot of information, especially if you have a common name. My maternal grandmother was Coyne and my grandad was McDonagh, both from Connemara, and my paternal grandparents were Farrell and O’Connor from Clare but moved to Galway.

It’s great now that the Irish 1911 census is online, but you do have to know of the area or you’d be searching forever. The 1901 census is there too and it’s free: http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/ Irish Genealogy is a great website, it has some church and civil records: https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/ Find a Grave is also worth a look, this has graves listed from all over the world, and although not all the graves are listed some of them are. https://www.findagrave.com/ I also found the Galway County Heritage website helpful: https://heritage.galwaycommunityheritage.org/

I joined ancestry – but I’m just on the two week trial, it’s very expensive so I won’t continue with it, and there is a lot of misinfomation, although it was very cool to find a photo of my granny – even though the wrong name was on it. The Connemara Facebook group have been brilliant, and I’ve found some people who knew my family. I’ve seen that some of my relatives moved to America and Canada, and I think how brave they were going to a country that they would have known nothing about.

If you are looking to trace Sligo roots (and since posting about my family I’ve been asked by many people). I’d suggest contacting The County Sligo Heritage & Genealogy Centre they have over twenty-five years of experience in carrying out ancestral research, enabling countless people to discover their family lineage. They offer a comprehensive range of genealogy research services and products to people tracing their County Sligo roots from all over the world. I’d also recommend asking the Sligo Heritage and History Facebook Group.

I also really like the duchas website. They have a lovely collection of folklore compiled by schoolchildren in Ireland in the 1930s, they also have a photographic collection.

If you are looking for a birth, death, marriage etc. certficate, you will find all the information here. This is the official site, there are other companies but they will charge you more.

I suppose one of the good things about Social Media is that our ancestors won’t have much trouble finding out about us. In my case I’m all over the place! So my future relatives will get a real idea of who I was. It is fascinating to look back and to think of how our grandparents and great-grandparents lived.

Hopefully this post has been of interest to some of you. Happy searching.